Seriously, are people so dumbed down that they 1. cannot add; 2. cannot remember to bring cash around; 3. or are so selfish and ignorant that they cannot trust others to make change for them, so they’d rather appoint computers to do it? Have we not seen that computers are not infallible?

It’s insulting–the idea that we need “smart cards” because the people who own them are dumb.

People, use cash. If you don’t have the money in your wallet, you probably shouldn’t be buying it. Don’t become a debt slave. Or write a damn check. If your “merchant” will not take checks, ask them why. Start a fuss. Most ask for ID when taking checks anyway. Most can process checks electronically anyway, getting the money almost as fast as a credit transaction. And, finally, banks scan your check images. So why not use the checks you get with your account? It seems to me harder to forge a check than to commit fraud with a stolen credit card. But I wouldn’t know; I haven’t seen any data defending checks anymore. I doubt the mass media would tell anyone. They are all for us falling into line with these progressively insecure technologies designed for us to spend more–and if our identities get stolen in the process, well, that’s just a necessary danger of modern living. Don’t fall for it.

Sony said Thursday that it and four other Japanese companies would set up a joint venture to promote the use of FeliCa noncontact cards, used for ticketing and electronic money transactions. The joint venture, which includes trading house Mitsui & Co and printing and electronics components company Dai Nippon Printing, will be established in January with capitalization of 400 million yen ($3.63 million). Sony will take a 60 percent stake, it said.

Plastic cards equipped with Sony’s FeliCa chips, which can be scanned for data transfers, are widely used in Japan and other Asian countries, including China and Singapore. Sony has shipped more than 250 million FeliCa chips since 1996. In Japan, electronics makers put the chips in mobile phones, turning handsets into e-wallets and e-tickets.

Some of the more relevant, less repetitive articles I come across…these are just three from the wide collection at infowars.com–which, in turn, is culled from many others. This trend cannot be denied; consequently, it is our responsibility to understand and inform our legislators and power-makers that we do not want this invisibly sewn into our clothes, or planted into our flesh.
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There’s not a lot of middle ground on the subject of implanting electronic identification chips in humans.

Advocates of technologies like radio frequency identification tags say their potentially life-saving benefits far outweigh any Orwellian concerns about privacy. RFID tags sewn into clothing or even embedded under people’s skin could curb identity theft, help identify disaster victims and improve medical care, they say.

Critics, however, say such technologies would make it easier for government agencies to track a person’s every movement and allow widespread invasion of privacy. Abuse could take countless other forms, including corporations surreptitiously identifying shoppers for relentless sales pitches. Critics also speculate about a day when people’s possessions will be tagged–allowing nosy subway riders with the right technology to examine the contents of nearby purses and backpacks.

“Invasion of privacy is going to be impossible to avoid,” said Katherine Albrecht, the founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, or CASPIAN, a watchdog group created to monitor the use of data collected in the so-called loyalty programs used increasingly by supermarkets. Albrecht worries about a day when “every physical item is registered to its owner.”

The overriding idea behind tagging people with chips–whether through implants or wearable devices such as bracelets–is to improve identification and, consequently, tighten access to restricted information or physical areas.

But on top of civil liberties and other policy issues, such technologies face visceral objections from many people who frown on the idea of being implanted with tags that can track them like migrating tuna. Complaints have led several companies to abandon plans to use RFID technologies in products, much less in human bodies.

The concept of implanting chips for tracking purposes was introduced to the general public more than a decade ago, when pet owners began using them to keep tabs on dogs and cats. The notion of embedding RFID tags in the human body, though, remained largely theoretical until the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when a technology executive saw firefighters writing their badge numbers on their arms so that they could be identified in case they became disfigured or trapped.

Richard Seelig, vice president of medical applications at security specialist Applied Digital Solutions, inserted a tracking tag in his own arm and told the company’s CEO that it worked. A new product, the VeriChip, was born.

Applied Digital formed a division named after the chip and says it has sold about 7,000 of the electronic tags. An estimated 1,000 have been inserted in humans, mostly outside the United States, with no harmful physical side effects reported from the subcutaneous implants, the company said.

“It is used instead of other biometric applications,” such as fingerprints, said Angela Fulcher, vice president of marketing at VeriChip, which is based in Palm Beach, Fla. The basic technology comes from Digital Angel, a sister company under the Applied corporate umbrella that has sold thousands of tags for identifying pets and other animals.

VeriChip makes 11-millimeter RFID tags that are implanted in the fatty tissue below the right tricep. When near a scanner, the chip is activated and emits an ID number. When a person’s tag number matches an ID in a database, the person is allowed to enter a secured room or complete a financial transaction.

So far, enhancing physical security–controlling access to buildings or other areas–remains the most common application. RFID chips cannot track someone in real time the way the Global Positioning System does, but they can provide information such as whether a particular individual has gone through a door.

Latin American customers are looking at both technologies for security purposes, which partly explains why some of VeriChip’s early clients included Mexico’s attorney general, as well as a Mexican agency trying to curb the country’s kidnapping epidemic, and commercial distributors in Venezuela and Colombia.

The value of these technologies was underscored recently by a CNET News.com reader who wrote from Puerto Rico to inquire about their development. In her e-mail, Frances Pabon said she hopes that RFID or GPS technologies can be used for her husband, who must travel through neighborhoods in San Juan that are infested with crack dealers.

“I think safeguarding his safety doesn’t necessarily violate his privacy,” she wrote. “And if I am made to choose between keeping him safe versus keeping him private, I’d rather keep him safe and then change private data such as credit cards, bank accounts, etc., after.”

Safety has been a primary driver in some U.S. applications as well. An Arizona company called Technology Systems International, for example, says it has improved security in prisons with an RFID-like system for inmates and guards. The company’s products came out in 2001 and are based on technology licensed from Motorola, which created it for the U.S. military to find gear lost in battle.

TSI’s wristbands for inmates transmit signals every two seconds to a battery of antennas mounted in the prison facility. By examining the time the signal is received by each antenna, a computer can determine the exact location of each prisoner at any given time and can reconstruct prisoners’ movements later, if necessary to investigate their actions.

Since the technology was installed at participating prisons, violence is down up to 60 percent in some facilities, said TSI President Greg Oester, who says the wristbands are designed for the “uncooperative user.” TSI, a division of security company Alanco Technologies, has installed the system in four prisons and will add a fifth soon.

“Inmates know they are being monitored and know they will get caught. The word spreads very quickly,” Oester said. “It increases the safety in facilities.”

In a California prison that uses the TSI technology, an inmate confessed to stabbing another prisoner 20 minutes after authorities showed him data from his radio transmitter that placed him in the victim’s cell at the time of the stabbing, Oester said. A women’s prison in the state has begun a pilot program to test whether the technology prevents sexual assaults.

Conversely, at an Illinois prison, Oester said, convicts have pointed to this sort of data as a way to prove that they weren’t involved in prison incidents. Guards have similar tags, embedded in pagers rather than wristbands, which set off an alarm if they are removed or tampered with.

Tagging hospital patients…and alumni?
Beyond law enforcement, the technology is drawing interest from a variety of industries that have pressing security needs. Companies that operate highly sensitive facilities, such as nuclear power plants, are looking at TSI’s technology.

Hospitals in Europe and the United States are also experimenting with inserting tags in ID bracelets. The Jacobi Medical Center in New York, along with Siemens Business Services, has launched a pilot program that will outfit more than 200 patients with radio bracelets.

This technology is designed to enable various health care professionals to obtain patient information such as X-rays and medical histories from a database securely and more quickly. The system will also use antennas to track individuals as they walk about the hospital and send alerts if a patient begins to collapse. Other pilot systems are being tested specifically to monitor patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

As such tagging systems become more widely known, some industries that hadn’t been expected to use the technology are considering innovative applications of it. A South Carolina firearms maker, FN Manufacturing, is evaluating the technology for use in “smart guns” equipped with grip sensors that would allow only their owners to use them.

In a less violent but practical application, Ray Hogan of Princeton University’s alumni association has contemplated distributing RFID bracelets among meeting attendees to track attendance at events that have multiple components. The technology would let organizers see which programs attendees find most valuable by virtue of how long they stay. Like others, however, Hogan says privacy issues may well keep the idea from becoming a reality.

When such technologies are employed, they can be even more effective if implanted in the body. Supporters and critics both say RFID tags under the skin would invariably increase the volume and quality of personal data, with the benefit of, at the very least, reducing the margin of error for misidentification in the event of a disaster.

The problem, detractors say, is that the vast quantities of accumulated data would be vulnerable to theft and abuse. They cite historical practices of retail establishments, which for years have listened in on customer conversations and viewed consumer behavior on remote cameras to improve sales. Supermarkets routinely collect data about individual shoppers’ purchases and buying habits through “loyalty programs,” along with credit card and electronic banking transactions.

Even random individuals could spy on those with tags, because today’s RFID technologies do not yet have the processing power to encrypt information. “I don’t see how you can get enough power into those things” to encrypt data, said Whitfield Diffie, a fellow and security expert at Sun Microsystems.

Some consumers have described scenarios in which a hacker could extract a person’s identification number with an RFID reader, create a chip with the same number and then impersonate them. But even if such chip forgery were possible, alerts would probably be sounded as soon as a system detected that the same person was in two different places at once.

Still, implanting RFID chips could vastly increase the potential for police surveillance of ordinary citizens. Conceivably, every wall socket could become an RFID reader that feeds into a government database.

Critics contend that if tagging gets out of control, the day will eventually come when the cops will be able to trace junk thrown in a public trash can back to the person who tossed it.

“Do you want the people in power to have that much power?” Albrecht asked rhetorically. “The infrastructure obstacle has been overcome. It is called electricity and the Internet. ”

What the FDA Won’t Tell You about the VeriChip

A little electronic capsule, smaller than a dime, could be one of the biggest technological advances in how we share and store private medical records. It may also be one of the most controversial.

Known as the VeriChip, it is a microchip that is implanted under a person’s skin, and then scanned with a special reader device to reveal important medical data about that person.

Applied Digital, the Florida-based company that makes the VeriChip, hopes the implant will revolutionize how doctors obtain medical information, particularly in emergency situations. Theoretically, if a person can’t speak, medics could scan that person and quickly be linked to a database that would provide crucial information like the patient’s identity, blood type and drug allergies.

Dr. Csaba Magassi, a plastic surgeon in Northern Virginia, is among a nationwide network of doctors who are ready and waiting to implant the VeriChip into willing patients. His office receives calls daily from people inquiring about the chip.

Dr. Magassi said, “If you are in an auto accident, [and] you are unconscious, they could scan you, know exactly who you are; your medical history can easily be printed out onto the hospital record.”

Dr. Magassi added, “If a patient comes in requesting the VeriChip, I usually tell them it takes between two and five minutes to place the device in place. A needle which contains the VeriChip is inserted. The needle pushes the device through, and it is implanted permanently. Put a bandaid on and you are done.”

Dr. Magassi demonstrated the procedure for CBN News on an apple. Once the microchip was inserted, the hand-held scanner read the number on the chip using radio frequency waves. Think of it as a human barcode.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the VeriChip implant for medical use in humans in October, a huge victory for Applied Digital.

In an effort to jumpstart interest, the company launched the “Get Chipped” campaign. It is offering a discount to the first few hundred people who get the implant, and also plans to donate hundreds of scanners to the nation’s trauma units to promote use of the VeriChip.

But in a letter obtained by CBN News from the FDA to the VeriChip makers, the microchip is not completely safe. In fact, the letter lists a whole host of health risks associated with the device, including “adverse tissue reaction,” “electrical hazards” and “MRI incompatibility.”

Applied Digital and the Food and Drug Administration refused our requests for an interview to discuss these risks.

Consumer privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht said, “There are millions of people that have read the press reports about all the positives of this technology, but really have no idea about its dangers.”

Albrecht strongly opposes the VeriChip for the physical risks it poses, as well as the privacy risks. She has been called “the Erin Brokovich of RFID chips.”

On her Web site, http://www.spychips.com, Albrecht reveals the potential dangers of the VeriChip and other radio frequency identification methods.

Albrecht said, “There’s a very serious concern that, already, engineers and people who think along those lines are already thinking like hackers and criminals — they’re already starting to say, how can this system be compromised, how can it be abused? When you are dealing with a radio frequency device, by design, it is transmitting info using invisible radio waves at a distance. In this case, that distance is only a couple of inches or a couple of feet so it’s not a huge distance, but it means that anyone who can get within a couple of inches or a few feet of you, even with a reader device they have hidden in a backpack or a purse, would be able to scan that number, obtain that info and potentially duplicate it.”

And it is not just private medical information at stake. The microchip implant technology has been around for several years now, and has been used for a variety of different applications.

Thousands of chips have been implanted in pets by veterinarians for identification purposes. Livestock is now chipped to track things like mad-cow disease. Manufacturers are putting chips in products like clothing and shoes for marketing research.

In Mexico, the attorney general and his top aides were chipped for security purposes. And, in Spain at the Baja Beach Club, patrons can get a microchip with their financial information implanted, so they can pay for their cocktails with a swipe of the arm. As these pictures seem to suggest, getting chipped is fun and painless.

Applied Digital also launched a brand new application for the chip last year called the “VeriPay.” This implant would hold all of a person’s financial information. Rather than swipe a card or pay cash, consumers would scan their wrists for purchases. And, if a swipe of the wrist becomes too troublesome, there are already prototypes made of doorway portals that can simply scan a person and their purchases as they walk through the door.

Allbrecht said, “I think there is a very real concern that, down the road, such a chip would become mandatory. And not necessarily initially, but it would be voluntary, in the same way let’s say as credit cards or a drivers license is voluntary. No one forces you to have a driver’s license or to have a cell phone, but yet the vast majority of people do, because it is very difficult to function in a normal society without it.”

For now, though, a microchip implant is voluntary. Only a few thousand chips have been sold and only a fraction of those have been implanted in humans.

Setting the stage for controversial tracking technology, the satellite telecommunications company ORBCOMM has signed an agreement with VeriChip Corp., maker of the world’s first implantable radio frequency identification microchip.

VeriChip, a subsidiary of Applied Digital , will work with ORBCOMM to develop and market new military, security and healthcare applications in the U.S. and around the world, the company said.

As WorldNetDaily reported , Applied Digital has created and successfully field-tested a prototype of an implant for humans with GPS, or global positioning satellite, technology.

Once inserted into a human, it can be tracked by GPS technology and the information relayed wirelessly to the Internet, where an individual’s location, movements and vital signs can be stored in a database for future reference.

“ORBCOMM’s relationship with VeriChip provides yet another new and important industry that will use the ORBCOMM satellite system and its ground infrastructure network to transmit messages globally,” ORBCOMM CEO Jerry Eisenberg said.

Initially, after privacy concerns and verbal protests over marketing the technology for government use , Applied backed away from public discussion about such implants and the possibility of using them to usher in a “cashless society.”

ORBCOMM, a global satellite telecommunications company, today announced that it has executed an agreement with VeriChip(TM) Corporation, a subsidiary of Applied Digital (NASDAQ:ADSX), to be its provider of satellite and telecommunication services for applications to be developed for use with the world’s first implantable radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip, also called VeriChip(TM).

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will also work together to develop and market new military, security, and healthcare applications for use in the United States and around the world.

VeriChip(TM) Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Applied Digital. The VeriChip product is a subdermal RFID microtransponder that can be used in a variety of security, financial, emergency identification and healthcare applications. About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip Device contains a unique verification number that is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over the VeriChip. In October 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared VeriChip for medical applications in the United States. VeriChip is not a FDA-regulated device with regards to its security, financial, personal identification/safety applications.

“ORBCOMM’s relationship with VeriChip(TM) provides yet another new and important industry that will use the ORBCOMM satellite system and its ground infrastructure network to transmit messages globally,” Jerry Eisenberg, CEO of ORBCOMM, said.

About ORBCOMM

ORBCOMM is a wireless telecommunications company that provides reliable, cost effective data communications services to customers around the world through its unique low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite network and global ground infrastructure. A diverse customer base, including industry leaders General Electric, Caterpillar Inc., Volvo Trucks, XATA, and AirIQ, uses ORBCOMM services to track, monitor and control mobile and fixed assets including trucks, containers, marine vessels, locomotives, heavy machinery, pipelines, oil wells, utility meters and storage tanks anywhere in the world. For more information call 1-800-ORBCOMM or visit its Web site at www.ORBCOMM.com.

About Applied Digital

Applied Digital develops innovative security products for consumer, commercial and government sectors worldwide. Its unique and often proprietary products provide security for people, animals, the food supply, government/military arena and commercial assets. Included in this diversified product line are RFID applications, end-to-end food safety systems, GPS/Satellite communications and telecomm and security infrastructure, positioning Applied Digital as the leader of Security Through Innovation. Applied Digital is the owner of a majority position in Digital Angel Corporation (AMEX: DOC). For more information, visit the company’s website at http://www.adsx.com .

This release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding ORBCOMM’s expected commercial operations. These forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions and ORBCOMM’s actual results and operations may be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements.

I’m just copying and pasting some of the easiest to understand material I’ve gleaned from my own research, because there is a fair quantity of information/ interpretation/editorials out there and it is true that this information needs to be known, but people are busy.
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Assuming there is no such thing as a mind control implant, the accounts appearing in our in-boxes (and across the internet) raise disturbing questions about our society. Is our ubiquitous surveillance technology creating a surge in neurosis and mental illness? Research suggests that people do tend to get paranoid if they believe they have no way of knowing when they are being watched. Perhaps the rise in CCTV cameras, database profiling, and guerilla marketing is making us all a little nuts, and some people express it more overtly than others.

Living in this surveillance and power-mad century, there’s a wise Chinese proverb we should all keep in mind:

“The fire you kindle for your enemy often burns you more than it burns him.”

While some people may, at first glance, think it’s a good idea to tag the more dangerous and unsavory elements of society with a computer chip, it’s actually a very bad idea in the long run. An industry that’s built around tagging human beings against their will, whether they’re illegal immigrants, criminals, or even mass murderers, will grow fat and powerful and bureaucratic from feeding at the trough of our tax dollars. An infrastructure of human tagging will take root, then, like all industries, it will want to see its market expand. (Think of the prison-industrial complex today — or any powerful lobby.)

The human-implant-prison-industrial-complex will shmooze at political fundraisers and send lobbyists to urge politicians to expand the mandatory chipping program to other “markets.” They’ll urge the tagging of parolees and ex-felons. In fact, they’ll say, society would be safer if all criminals — rapists, drug dealers, prostitutes, thieves, and domestic abusers — had a chip implant, along with gun law violators, marijuana smokers, drunk drivers, custody violators, tax cheats, habitual traffic violators, shoplifters, protesters who won’t stay in their designated First Amendment zones, rowdy college revelers, and eventually the guy who didn’t fill out the right paperwork to add a deck onto the back of his house.

Once the mandatory chipping lobby really gets going, they won’t stop at criminals. For our own safety, they’ll get the lawmakers to agree that we ought to chip nuclear plant workers, anyone handling biological or chemical agents, drivers transporting hazardous materials, anyone owning a gun, anyone working with children, anyone preparing food for public consumption, anyone…

Get the picture yet?

No matter who you are and how saintly a life you lead, I can almost promise you that if we light this fire to burn the pedophiles, somewhere down the road it will burn us and our children, too.

Big Brother has surrounded us with dried kindling and he’s hankering for a match. Don’t hand it to him.

This is really insulting–big brands and stores need to learn CONSUMERS ARE NOT CRIMINALS.

I do not even shop at stores that require me to check my bag (except, painfully, the occasional record shop)–I hate this “practice.” Heaven forbid I should do more than 1 thing a day. I do not want to trust a clerk with my bag in a cubbyhole, thanks…besides, you have cameras anyway, cut the crap…do we need to be doubly invasive? Checked bags and cameras? If you have one, you don’t need the other.

Support small businesses instead. They don’t want to do this. It’s the large brands and the big-box retail that are greedy and paranoid about “shoplifting.” But, at the same time, they love all the valuable “marketing information” this supposed “inventory control” tells them. This is one kind of “consumer research” that doesn’t need to happen.
Conventional stores employ sweatshop labor.
Boycott Levi’s, Dockers, and other big clothing brands, megabrands, and umbrella-brands until they take a PUBLIC stand that they will NOT use RFID in their clothes to be kept inside the clothes (sewn into the clothes), to remain in the clothes after their sale to consumers.

—from the spychips.com blog:

April 28, 2006

Tell Levi Strauss What You Think about RFID

Main Number: (415)501-6000
This number goes to the main switchboard. The operator can switch you to Consumer Relations. Remember. If you call the toll-free Consumer Relations number on the Levi Strauss website, your phone number can be obtained.

Email: info@levi.com
This email address goes to a general email box. Consumer Relations would like you to use a special online form, but that doesn’t give you a record of your comment. Please share a copy with us. You can email me at Liz@spychips.com.

RFID technology can easily be abused, and we believe it is essential that all the societal issues be explored before it is deployed. We hope Levi Strauss will be the company to step forward and begin the needed dialogue.

The current Levi Strauss RFID test reportedly involves RFID hang tags that can be clipped from the garments at checkout. But as anyone who has read “Spychips” knows, the RFID industry has discussed affixing tags on and within products and tracking consumers through them–a practice that could usher in an Orwellian surveillance society. On the clothing front, companies have talked about embedding RFID tags in the seams of garments and in flexible clothing labels. There has even been talk of using threads woven into fabric as antennas.

That’s why it is crucial to counter *any* attempts at tagging individual consumer items now. Once the RFID infrastructure is in place, the nature of tagging–and the tracking done via the tags–can change overnight.